Intereses particulares detrás de cada regla

Brown ran a shoeshine stand in Washington, D.C. — except that city ordinances prohibited the running of shoeshine stands on the sidewalks. Other kinds of merchants could sell things on the sidewalk; just not shoeshiners. The rule was a holdover from the days of Jim Crow, when white shoeshiners generally worked indoors, and thus used economic regulations to exclude competition from black shoeshiners who worked outside. Represented by the Institute for Justice, Brown sued, and a federal district court struck down the law under the rational basis test: “There must be at least some plausible connection between the ‘uniqueness’ of a bootblack and the purpose of the law. To find this connection, we would have to ‘strain our imagination’ beyond that which is required under the rational basis test to justify prohibiting bootblacks from the use of public space while permitting access to virtually every other type of vendor. Even the minimal rational basis test does not require the court to muse endlessly about this regulation’s conceivable objectives nor to ‘manufacture justifications’ for its continued existence.” Brown v. Barry, 710 F. Supp. 352, 356 (D.D.C. 1989) Aquí